


flowers for a ghost town

by headlong



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Pre-Slash, discussion of minor character death, set during act 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23155765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headlong/pseuds/headlong
Summary: Chikage, and a late-night errand, and Itaru.
Relationships: Chigasaki Itaru/Utsuki Chikage
Comments: 10
Kudos: 148





	flowers for a ghost town

**Author's Note:**

> quick disclaimer: because this fic is set during act 6, it explicitly mentions plot points that come up in act 5 (and particularly a certain Thing chikage does). okay? okay

“Okay,” Chigasaki says, “I’ll bite, senpai. Where are we going?”

Even though the car is stopped at a light, Chikage can’t bring himself to make eye contact with the man in his passenger seat. It isn’t an unjustified question, or even a difficult one; but he still isn’t sure that this is a good idea, or that he hasn’t asked his new roommate for too much too soon, or that this trip isn’t going to shatter everything he’s only just started to dream of letting himself have. As a compromise, he allows himself to glance across in the rear-view mirror. Like a man checking around the corner of a labyrinth for a monster. But Chigasaki meets his eyes there, a Medusa gaze which still turns him brittle, and Chikage is forced to turn his head and look at him anyway.

The hour is late enough that everything feels surreal, warped by the unstable middle ground between night and morning. Like the world around them has dropped away, or else that he’s sleepwalking through it. And it’s hard to shake the creeping sensation that, at any second, he’ll wake violently and everything will dissipate around him. The empty main road, the shape and shadow of the inside of his sedan, the ten-and-two angle of his hands on the wheel, and Chigasaki Itaru riding shotgun most of all. Washed in languid blue and artificial white, his roommate looks like some creature behind the glass of an aquarium, foreign in his perfect normality. And while he has one of the games he always seems to be playing open on his phone, he’s clearly not paying attention to the screen. 

“You don’t trust me?”

It comes out a little jagged; a little not quite a joke. Chikage turns his eyes back to the traffic light in front of him, and its stale, burned-out red.

“Mm… I wouldn’t say that? But if you’re gonna ask me for a favour, and spirit me away from the dorm, the least you can do is tell me what it is.”

“It’s not as if you were doing anything important.”

“I was busy decompressing, you know. And I deserve it. Do you even understand how much overtime I’ve had to pull this week?”

“Right. I remember you telling me about that particularly troublesome client you were assigned.”

“Oh, yeah, glad all  _ that’s  _ over. But right now, I’m more concerned about my particularly troublesome senpai. Who keeps dodging the question.”

Well, at this point, he can’t deny that  _ troublesome _ is the least he deserves. The traffic light changes after what feels like an eternity, and Chikage takes his foot off the brake.

“All right. The other day, you asked if I had any other possessions, or if I planned to live out of my suitcase forever. And the fact is that I do.”

“K. And we’re going to wherever they are?”

“We are. I was living somewhere else, before I moved into the dorms.” Truth. “Just temporarily.” Lie. “And I thought that, if I’m to move in properly, I should retrieve the last of my things.” Not quite either. And then he waits.

“Yeah, okay. Any reason we’re heading there at –” Chigasaki swipes at his phone, squints down at it. “One thirty-seven in the morning, on a work night?”

“Call it an impulse.”

“Yeah, I got that much. And I know I’m not gonna get a straight answer from you, or anything, but for the record? Just cause I’m your junior doesn’t mean you can drag me around like this.”

Chikage wonders if Chigasaki’s also thinking about Izumi; Izumi, and her mysterious disappearance during Oz rehearsals, and the fact he had confessed to being responsible. He wonders if Chigasaki is aware of just how great their difference in physical strength is. He wonders if Chigasaki had told anyone they were going out, just as a precautionary measure, even though the dorm had been dark and silent when they had left. And he swallows the tightness in his throat.

But what is he meant to say:  _ I’m not, I’m not, I’m not? _ Coming from him, that’d probably sound like a lie too.

_ He has some idea of what you are, _ he tells himself,  _ and what you did, and he still got in the car with you. That’s not nothing. _

“And also,” Chigasaki continues, oblivious to his thoughts, “if you wanted somebody to help move stuff around, you could’ve picked someone else. Like Tasuku, or Omi, or Juza. Or literally anyone but me, actually.”

This, though, he can do. “Think of it as strength training. I’m sure it’ll help you somehow in the future.”

“Yeah, right. If Spring Troupe ever does a play with action scenes, I’ll ask Tsuzuru for the least important role.”

“And if Tsuzuru refuses?”

“I’ll make him listen. I have strats for dealing with him, you know.”

“Oh?”

“Well, I can’t just tell you, senpai, not after it took so long to develop them. And you’re a cheat character anyway, so you should figure it out yourself.”

Chikage considers, for a moment, Tsuzuru. Like all of Spring Troupe, his levers are obvious: he cares too much, works himself too hard, gets too caught up in his role as an older brother. But they’re also on the same side, now. Because Tsuzuru had fought for him, like all of Spring Troupe had – like all of Spring Troupe are  _ still _ fighting for him – and it feels wrong to contemplate how to best take him apart in return. Even for something as ultimately trivial as securing the best role in a play. Instead, he steers the conversation onto slightly less precarious ground.

“And what are your techniques for dealing with  _ me?_”

“I can’t reveal those either. They’re the last line of defense I have against my tyrannical roommate, so I can’t give them up easily.”

“You know, Chigasaki, that deflection makes it sound like you don’t actually have any.”

“Hey, listen, that’s not fair. I –” 

But, for better or worse, their conversation – and their drive – ends there. Chikage pulls over and kills the engine, and Chigasaki’s reply gets lost.

The hideout looks the same from outside as it always has. And, probably, as it always will; framed by a chain-link fence, dark and imposing and windowless. Chigasaki’s face is turned away as he takes it in, pressed up against the glass, gone strange and quiet.

As soon as Chikage gets out of the car and works the feeling back into his limbs, the first thing that hits him is the far-off scent of brine. They’ve parked near the city’s docks, in a back street not too far from the water. When the wind picks up, he can smell the ocean as clearly as if he were standing on the shore, and he takes a moment, after unlocking and passing through the gate, to let it wash over him.

That said, Chigasaki seems to have other things on his mind. He’s still looking up at the hideout, neck craned all the way back, eyes on its high roof. “So… this is it? You lived in a warehouse?”

“Just for a time.”

“I guess in this economy, you have to take what you can get, huh.”

It’s a weak joke, and it lands flatly. But it’s also a kind of confirmation that Chigasaki feels as out of sorts here as he does; that he’s not sure where their equilibrium rests either, now that they’ve started to be honest with each other, and now that they’re milling around outside the place where too much of Chikage is still buried.

“I’ll go inside first,” he says instead. “Follow me once I’ve made sure it’s safe.”

“Roger, senpai.”

So Chikage leaves his roommate leaning against the fence, and heads over to the entrance. His key (small, silver) is in its usual place, and familiar in his hand, even though it’s now bracketed by the keys to the Mankai dorm (large, bronze) and his room (medium, silver again). The lock yields easily, and he pushes the door open. Reaches around the frame, and flips on the light.

Under the dim yellow glare, it looks… exactly the same as it did three weeks ago, and he’s not sure why he had expected otherwise. Maybe because part of him had thought the place would be cold, like a catacomb, disturbed for the first time in centuries by a trespasser hoping to rob its empty graves; but it’s quite the opposite. The ventilation in here has never been good, and the air feels stuffier still for the warehouse being abandoned. He isn’t sure if the heat or the cold would’ve made him feel worse.

So he steps inside, feet almost soundless as he descends into the main room, and assesses the place critically. His lie about only living here temporarily isn’t even a good one, or difficult to pick apart; because the furniture here doesn’t look like it’s in storage. It’s arranged all wrong, like this place was more than a stopover on a far longer road. Like there might be a knock on the door at any second, tapping out a secret code shared between the three of them, and August might come strolling back in, wearing that familiar smile.  _ Hey, April, long time no see. You’ve been good to December while I’ve been gone, haven’t you…  _

A noise from behind startles him, and he turns, heart hammering in his throat. “Aug–” 

But it isn’t August. It’s just Chigasaki, who’s misjudged the height of the step that leads into the warehouse proper, and tripped, and braced himself heavily against the doorframe.

It feels like he’s been jerked sharply awake. And Chikage  _ knows _ it must show on his face, knows he’s been caught. Knows he looks like he’s been ripped wide open. But he doesn’t know what it is that might be spilling out of him, or what Chigasaki might be divining from his entrails. Only that, for all his otaku talk, Chigasaki isn’t stupid or oblivious, and that a cut this sudden lays open every ugly thing in Chikage at once.

All right. He’s been trained for situations like this. He knows what he has to do, and that’s to stay calm under fire, and keep up the lie. To pretend that he’s come here for his possessions, not fruitlessly seeking some kind of closure.

So he schools his expression back into neutrality, fixes his glasses out of restless habit, and marches into the back room. The room the three of them had shared, back when they had lived here together. There isn’t much furniture, since they’d all been used to a frugal lifestyle, and a thin layer of dust sits over it all, grimy in the artificial light. He hasn’t been in here since he first pretended to move into the Mankai dormitory, since he’d kept Izumi in the main room during her captivity; and even when he’d first joined Spring Troupe, and come back to the hideout every night to sleep, he’d chosen to curl up on one of the sofas rather than disturb this shrine to August’s memory. To a time when he had been happy, and hadn’t felt like it was wholly undeserved.

Still, he needs to make himself focus on the present. So he leaves the door slightly ajar, not enough for the room to be visible from outside, but just enough that the two of them will be able to hold a conversation. Through the gap between door and doorframe, he can see his junior perched on a chair in the common area.

“Chigasaki. Tell me about one of your games.”

“Huh?”

“I asked you to tell me about a video game. For instance, what were you playing before I borrowed you tonight?”

And Chikage doesn’t care, not really. The appeal of the medium is mostly lost on him, even when it’s coming from Chigasaki, who he likes enough to let him get away with occasional gamer talk. But he needs a distraction, and this is as good a distraction as any. He takes stock of the room again: beds, a dresser, a bookshelf, August’s old work desk. On the other side of the door, Chigasaki coughs self-consciously.

“Uh, yeah, okay. So I’m playing this dating sim at the moment – actually, senpai, do you even know what that means?”

“Of course not.”

“So, dating sims are these games where… well, it’s in the name, really. There are a bunch of characters, and you pick one to date. And, cause each character has their own story, you have to replay them a bunch of times to see all the endings.”

He steps over to the dresser, opens the topmost drawer. August’s clothes are still there, untouched; he’d never been able to bring himself to get rid of them. But it’s not his place to do that now, alone, not when it’s the least he still owes to December – to  _ Hisoka_ – so Chikage slides the first drawer shut and opens the second. 

“And? Which fictional girls are you pursuing at the moment?”

“Actually.” He doesn’t think he’s imagining the hesitation in the way Chigasaki pauses. “It’s not that kind of dating sim.”

It takes a moment for the implications to sink in, but then Chikage’s hands still on the lip of the drawer. And what is he meant to say to that? To Chigasaki reading into the subtext, the secret of what this place meant to him, and offering up a secret of his own in exchange? Because his roommate, like all of Spring Troupe, is at once deceptively simple and deceptively hard to read. And even if it’s meant to be a kindness, Chikage still hates the way it tastes.

“That seems – understandable,” he says, as honest a reply (a signal) as he can manage. He glances helplessly at the few clothes he has left in the dresser, decides he can’t bear to think about any of them right now, and abandons that project. “Still, though. What are the love interests like?”

“There’re four all up, but you’re stuck choosing from two on the first run. You have to clear both of those to unlock the third, and the third to unlock the fourth. Dating sims do that kind of thing a lot, cause that way, you get led through the story in the right order across runs.”

He moves across the room to the small bookshelf. Some of it is taken up by his library of old novels, but most of it is still occupied by August’s huge collection of jazz CDs. Another thing he doesn’t have the right to sort through on his own. “That doesn’t tell me anything about them as characters.”

“Yeah, I was  _ getting  _ to that. So in this one, the guys are like… vampire cops? I know what face you’re probably making, senpai, but hear me out.”

“Vampire cops.”

“Yeah, their job is to hunt down vampires who go rogue or kill people or do, I don’t know, other vampire crimes? The game’s kinda vague on that. And they’re all based off famous vampires, though it’s pretty loose in practice. So you’ve got Dracula and Nosferatu, but you’ve also got Nikola, the bastard son of Elisabeth Bathory, who the writers definitely just made up. And Carmine, who’s a rule-63’d Carmilla.”

“And the protagonist herself?”

“She’s kinda whatever. Even though she joins up with the vampire cops because she wants to, or says she does, she’s weirdly passive about it? And all the guys just end up doing everything for her anyway.”

Chikage realises, with uncharacteristic slowness, that he’s been staring at the same row of CDs for the past minute. Distracted by the gamer babble, or else still dragging his feet on actually going through with this. There’s a yellowed label poking out from midway down that shelf; it reads  _ Dixieland, _ in August’s scratchy scientist handwriting. He pushes it carefully back in. “Which you think is a problem.”

“Yeah. Even in an otome game, I’d rather have a heroine who does stuff, you know? If I wanted to play as a useless character with no skills, I’d just be myself IRL.”

“But even if she doesn’t know how to do anything, she’s still considered attractive by her love interests, isn’t she? Or is she attractive precisely because she’s useless?”

“That’s like, fifty layers too deep for this conversation. Did you want me to be a gaming-chair psychologist, and put together a theory about the whole otome genre, or did you want me to recap  _ Juridik Lovers: Law, Blood?_”

“No, go on. I’m listening.”

“So. Anyway. The first two guys you can date are Ratu – uh, Nosferatu, they call him that for short – and Carmine. Carmine is a flirty ladies-man type, which I’m not huge on? So I did Ratu first, and he’s probably my favourite of them. He’s not that exciting, and has a pretty generic nice-boy route, but that doesn’t really get old for me.”

“So you usually go for nice boys?” But that’s too loaded a question, too hot on the heels of  _ not that kind of dating sim, _ so he pulls back a little. “That is to say, I’m not surprised. You seem like someone who’d enjoy straightforward protagonist types.”

“Yeah, don’t frame that like a cold read, senpai. Not when you were literally listening to me talk about RPGs yesterday, and when I’ve been trying to convince you to try some KniRoun IX co-op for like a week.”

The second-highest shelf is split almost exactly in half: books to the left, CDs to the right. But none of the old novels ring any bells in Chikage’s memory, even when he pulls a couple out and skims their blurbs. August’s label for this shelf reads  _ Kansas City Jazz. _

“And the next love interest?”

“Is Nikola. He’s this kinda rough ore-sama type who hates the establishment, cause he got screwed over by being a bastard – a bastard  _ child, _ though he’s also kind of a regular bastard. Anyway, enough about that guy. Finished his route, never thinking about him again.”

“Far be it from me to make you dwell on an  _ ore-sama character, _ of all things.”

“Exactly. I think you need to get that type just right, otherwise they’re insufferable, and Nikola is… yeah. He’s bad.”

He moves down to the next shelf, which is all his. Chikage usually reads fiction, in the most proper-noun sense, stately novels about reality that are allergic to the very idea of genre; and this shelf has the most literary of his old collection. A far cry from what he’s seen of Chigasaki’s bookshelf, crammed with light novels and a smattering of manga. And while he’s still not prepared to read any book with more than five words in the title, no matter how good his roommate insists it may be, none of his old favourites really spark anything in him either. It’s… troubling. Quite possibly in a productive way, but troubling nonetheless.

“Enough said?”

“Enough said. So I’m up to the true route now, which is Dracula, obviously. Except in the lore, being Dracula works like being James Bond. Like, when one Dracula dies, a different vampire steps up and becomes Dracula instead. So he’s  _ a _ Dracula, but not  _ the _ Dracula. But I’m kinda dragging my feet on actually playing it. Cause even though you have to play it last, the true route usually isn’t even the best one, and I’m getting that vibe here.”

“And why’s that?”

“Well… sometimes it’s just because of preferences, and the love interest who goes with it isn’t your type. But usually it’s cause a lot of games feel like they have to use that route to tie up every loose end. Or otherwise, I guess, escalate from the other routes? Finish stuff off with a bang. But ending things satisfyingly is hard, especially with the pressure of all that buildup. And just cause something’s true doesn’t mean it’s not gonna be an anticlimax.”

By this point, Chikage has just about had enough. Not of Chigasaki, or of this conversation, but of the broader exercise; of picking through the debris of his old life, and hoping that some of the pain this is drawing out of him is the pain of healing. So he makes an agreeing noise, and steps away from the bookshelf, and then there’s nothing left but August’s desk.

It’s too clean, like this. August had used it half as a desk and half as a pharmaceutical workbench, even though the Organisation had arranged a real lab for him at one of their properties, so it had always been covered with papers and equipment and all kinds of miscellaneous items. But despite that, it had been an organised kind of chaos. Because August had always been able to retrieve exactly what he had needed whenever he had needed it, even if that had meant digging a single document out from a pile of a thousand identical others, or removing a sample from a rack buried under precariously-stacked reference books. And even if they had lived together for a thousand more years, Chikage might still have never come to understand how his mind had worked.

But he’s not interested in the suspiciously clean desk itself. Because its topmost drawer has a false bottom, as a hiding place for important documents in case their hideout was ever compromised. There are other nooks and crannies scattered throughout the warehouse, of course, but this one is – _was_ – always August’s favourite. Probably because it was the only one he’d made himself; while Chikage had spent a week’s worth of evenings prying panels loose from the walls and floor, strategically choosing spots in a pattern that defied rhyme or reason, his restless, too-bright brother had impulsively decided on a brief carpentry project while stalled in his research one day. Years ago, now, but the memory feels like a fresh wound.

(August had been so damn proud of himself about it, too. Even though he’d never actually used it for its intended purpose, only to keep his stash of emergency sweets away from Hisoka, who’d never been any the wiser.)

Ever the professional, Chikage finds the panel’s edges and pries it loose with steady hands. And sitting underneath it is a present, in neat white paper, and a card addressed to December.

He – stops breathing. Has to make himself remember to start again, how to draw air into lungs that suddenly feel far too small.

It makes sense, of course. Their final operation had been on the second of December, and August had been the type to plan ahead. No doubt he’d seen the perfect gift weeks in advance, or else had set aside a whole day to go shopping for it, or something like that. He always  _ had  _ made too big a deal of birthdays, too.

But just because it makes sense doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel like being kicked in the chest. Chikage’s eyes sting, and the room swims before him.

How long has it been since he’s cried over something? The last time had been out in the dormitory courtyard after Charlatan of Oz, alone with Hisoka and the moon, but the time before that – he doesn’t even remember. Possibly before he lost August; probably before he’d become aware of December’s second life at Mankai Company. Definitely back when he’d been an entirely different person, two or three or four times over.

He doesn’t blink. He can’t let himself blink. And he has, objectively, done far more difficult things than that before. Over the course of his life, he’s been variously shot at, stabbed, beaten, made to go hungry, and considered his own death up close on multiple occasions, among others. Once, he had needed to hold his breath for almost five minutes in order to escape a room filling with poison gas. And he had been forced to learn how to live alone, after losing everything, and forced to try and unlearn it too.

The problem is that if he blinks, it’ll become a  _ thing. _ It’ll become a thorn that embeds itself in him. And Chigasaki is still in the next room, and he has to be able to hear the ragged edges on every one of Chikage’s breaths, the only sound in a silence which keeps on lapsing. It’s pathetic, what he’s been reduced to. That he’s at the mercy of his own emotions like this; that, for all the progress he’s made, a single ill-timed reminder of someone he had loved can still knock him right back down to square one.

But – he knows these patterns, and he’s still thinking like his old self. The lonely, miserable one who’d been living for nothing but revenge, without the space or ability to be able to grieve. And he’s only just started to change, and it’s going to be a slow, thankless process to become anything but what he is now. And even though he knows all of this, acutely, he still has to try. He’d promised Hisoka, and he’d promised August. And he’d promised Spring Troupe.

He breathes in, and then out. Carefully, deliberately, he makes himself replace the panel in the drawer. Its shadow falls over Hisoka’s present, and then the crisp white paper vanishes entirely.

“Chigasaki,” he says. Even though his eyes are prickling from the force of trying to hold them open, and it feels like he’s carrying a boulder inside his ribcage, his voice remains level. “Can you do me another favour?”

“Yeah, okay. What’s one more at this point.”

“Close your eyes for a minute.”

Some shuffling from the other room, and then Chigasaki again. “They’re closed.”

Chikage turns off the bedroom light, then quietly closes the door. His companion is standing almost dead-centre in the main room, fidgeting in place, and he approaches as deliberately as he can.

“Do you trust me?”

Chigasaki swallows, then nods stiffly. “Yeah.”

“All right.”

So Chikage takes off his glasses, letting the world go blurred at the edges, and folds them neatly. Then he steps in, and rests his head on Chigasaki’s shoulder. Pressed close enough that the sweater’s fabric is scratchy against his eyelids. When he exhales, after what feels like years, it comes out shaky against his junior’s neck.

Chigasaki doesn’t even try to hold him, which is the right move. They’re not close enough as people for that to taste like anything but pity, and besides, that would defeat the purpose of asking him not to look. And Chikage tells himself that it’s enough: enough just to know the solid weight of Chigasaki against him, the lingering scent of the cologne he wears to the office, and the overwhelming warmth of his body, like returning home on a rainy day to find the heating already on. 

And he focuses on slowing his breathing, on quieting the noise of his heartbeat in his ears. On visualising the ache in his chest shrinking in on itself until it vanishes entirely. And when at last he pulls away, there are suspicious blotchy marks left on Chigasaki’s sweater. 

But he can’t make it obvious that he’s looking at that. Chikage replaces his glasses, fights to centre himself. Wrenches his gaze up from the tearstains dotting his junior’s collarbone. “You’re awfully quick to let your guard down around someone like me.”

“Yeah, yeah, senpai. I’m terrified.” Chigasaki opens one of his eyes the tiniest crack, and peers surreptitiously at him. “Can I look yet?”

“I’ll allow it.”

He opens his eyes and shakes his head a little, like he’s waking from a long sleep. Then his gaze sweeps over Chikage, weighing him up, but neither kind nor unkind in its judgment.

“You aren’t taking anything with you?”

It’s true; he realises, belatedly, that he’s still empty-handed. “No. I checked the other room as thoroughly as I could, but everything here is – it’s old.”

“Yeah, okay. But not even any of the furniture?”

Chikage takes one more look around the room. At the burned-out lamp angled over the seat where he had liked to read; at the long couch, where Hisoka had always wound up napping after work; at August’s favourite chair, carefully positioned after days of trial and error, in the spot which best caught the sunbeams spilling in from the only window on summer evenings. At a whole life mapped out in the angle of the sofa and the coffee table, in the floor tiles worn smooth from years of traversal. In the thick, choking dust over it all. And that life isn’t his any more.

“Not this time.”

“Well, suit yourself. Guess that means I managed to escape strength training for tonight.”

“For tonight.” He gestures from Chigasaki to the door. “After you.”

Chigasaki goes, and Chikage follows. But he lets himself look back over his shoulder, just once, before he turns out the lights. Even though he knows this isn’t the last time he’ll be here, it’ll feel a little less like home whenever he returns. Which is the point of the exercise – but still, it’s hard to say goodbye to a place which holds so many of his memories.

But Chigasaki lingers. As if unwilling to break the spell, the strange not-quite-tension that’s settled in. So they end up loitering in the courtyard between the hideout and the fence, staying behind together while not looking at each other, among concrete and metal bleached white by the streetlamps. It’s a perfect night – a perfect morning, technically – for being outside. Even if the glare of lights from the nearby port blocks out the stars, and even if he still doesn’t know what the two of them are supposed to be to each other.

“So,” Chigasaki says.

“So.”

“So that’s it, then.”

“That’s it.”

“Nothing else to say?”

“One thing to say. I should probably thank you for coming with me, even though I didn’t need to make use of you in the end.”

“Well, yeah. Of course. I wasn’t gonna let you go alone, or anything.”

“Because you thought I –”

“Because you were going to go, with or without me, so I may as well have come with.” Chigasaki shuffles his feet, backpedals a little. “Also, if you’d come rattling into our room at three in the morning, carrying a ton of stuff, with no explanation, I’d have been kinda mad.”

Chikage doesn’t say –  _ well, you’re supposed to bring a friend along when you visit family, and I don’t know if you would call me a friend, but maybe you’d call me something. _ But he also can’t let those words go unanswered. Even though this whole excursion was built on lie after lie, defending his vulnerabilities more out of habit than fear, there’s still one truth he can dredge up. One piece of himself he can own up to that’s real; and he can only hope it’s enough.

“…Chigasaki. I’m glad it was you.”

“Huh?”

“I’m glad it was you I got to share a room with."

The distant cry of gulls over the port, even at this late hour; the scent of salt in his nostrils. Chigasaki, in the too-bright light, that deep-sea aquarium creature, but without the safety of glass between them. The drying mark of tears on his sweater. And in this lighting, from this angle, he looks nothing at all like August. The way his glance bounces off Chikage, the way he hunches into himself, the way his mouth tightens a little in embarrassment – that’s all Chigasaki. And impossible to mistake.

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter.](https://twitter.com/farewellarcadia)


End file.
